Worthy Witness

Mine is not the southern version, but the northern.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Have a “dry” cookie sheet immediately available.

Our biscuits are made with flour, milk and butter and a teaspoon full of baking powder.  Cut the butter into the flour, add a touch of salt and baking powder and make a little pond area in the center for the milk; add it all at once and gently stir until the flour mixture is wet.  Plop a large tablespoon or so of the biscuit mix onto your cookie sheet and bake for 10 to 12 minutes until golden brown.   Hope that all biscuits will rise to the occasion.

While your biscuits are in the oven, wash and core beautiful, fresh, red strawberries.  Reserve at least four of the berries, quartering them for the tops.  Slice the remaining and then mash them with a potato smasher, add sugar on top, not too much and not too little; run some warm water over them and gently fold them over to create a  juice to go with the berries.  If you have a ripe, but not too ripe banana, slice that up and put it into the strawberries.  The banana adds potassium to the Vitamin C of the berries, making the desert divinely nutritious.  Your biscuits should be ready to take from the oven.

Let your biscuits stand for just about three minutes and slice in the middle.  Take a pat of butter, preferably at room temperature and smother the bottom, returning the top of each biscuit.  Get out your whisk and stainless steel bowl and remove your carton of “heavy” cream from the refrigerator.  Don’t be fooled by the labels; “whipping cream” is not the same.  For your berries, you must use the heavy cream.  Whisk it like hell, get it into good shape and then add some sugar, powdered if you are not using it right away, or granulated.  Then add the pure vanilla, just a capful; it is so expensive.

Time to assemble:  Wash your blueberries.  Remove the top half of your biscuit, and fill it with the berry and banana mixture;  add a dollop of whipped cream.  Add to this your top half of the biscuit and give it a second dollop of whipped cream.  Sprinkle the blueberries generously on top, and in the center, stand a quarter of a strawberry.  Add a small American flag if desired.  Bon Appetit.